The Old Graveyard
The Bullet
Far From Severe Cold
The Cloud That Floated by Many Years Ago
Both Sides of the Curtain
The Meteor
Umbilical Mother
The Young Boy
My Father’s Cousin
The Bride
The Horse on the Stone
The Strong Wind
A Pair of Pinching Shoes (I)
A Pair of Pinching Shoes (II)
A Pair of Pinching Shoes (III)
An Eternal Lamb
Intelligential Goat
The Cat That Wouldn’t Die
A Blind Chicken
Dog Love
The Father Who Always Came Back Late
The Summer Pasture
An Old Yurt
Daughter’s Water

Sample Pages Preview

My heart was filled with a fit of anxiety again and Istomped on my shadow. How I wished I could be tallerto make the bucket farther from the ground.
There were about fifty to sixty tombs in the oldgraveyard. With no gravestones, no one knew for surewho was buried there. Peering out of our window, wecould see the tombs pressed by the riprap, which lookedlike a stone hill. Among them, only a few tombs weresurrounded by a dry earth wall, which lent an air ofmystery to those buried underneath. There was a windowon the west wall, a door on the south wall, whichdecayed with time and fell onto the ground as if desertedby an owner who had left long ago. Nobody knew howmany years the tombs had been here or who on earthwas buried underneath. According to what the adultssaid, several people buried inside the area surroundedby the earth wall might have been very prestigious orhave belonged to one big family. In a word, anyway, theywere different. However, whether of humble origin oran honorable family, all the people were lying under theripraps in the graveyard. They became earth and nobodyshowed any interest. For as long as I can remember, noone held any ceremony there to express their grief overthe dead. Never had a new tomb since been set up thereto shorten the distance between their age and ours. Itseemed that they had been completely cleared out of ourlives and sealed up by time forever, kept separate fromthe world. As time went by, some tombs on the edge of the graveyard were gradually razed to the ground from frequent trampling of people and horses, like a sand hill carried away by the wind. One year, an ox stepped intothe graveyard and trampled a tomb with the result thathalf of its body was stuck inside. Being stupid, the ox justcouldn't manage to climb up by itself. Therefore, it tooka lot of hard work for people to get it out by pulling anddragging. It felt almost like dragging an ox out of mud.What was different was that if we had been working inmud, we might have gotten stained with muddy water,but working in the graveyard, we were left covered with alayer of dust so that those working looked as if they hadfallen into the tombs instead of the ox. It was funny. Afterthe ox was pulled out, there was a hole left in the tomb,which was covered by snow in the winter and remaineduncovered in the summer when it was pitch-dark andfrightening. Still, it stayed there with nobody takingcare of it. How I wished that someone could mind andcomfort my little life with a sense of security. But at thattime, who would ever imagine a little girl of just over tenyears old would have a terrible struggle along the road ofcourage that led to the spring through the graveyard.
Too much thinking made me unsure about whether Iwas outside the graveyard or inside it.
One evening, I climbed onto the roof and helped mymother air the slices of tomatoes on it. At this time everysummer, my father would go to Qitai to buy tomatoes andthen we would air and dry them on the roof to get themready for the winter. It had been my sister's business inprevious years and it was my turn this year. We aired thetomatoes from the afternoon until sunset. By the time itwas getting dark, my eyes had been already dyed red bythe tomatoes. I saw red roof, red sky, red land, red peopleand even a red star emerging earliest in the sky. Thismade me panic. I guessed that there must be somethingwrong with me. So I stood on the roof and rubbed myeyes, just to find my hand had turned red too. I stretchedmy hands over my head and tried to find out in the glowof sunset what had happened. At that moment, there aflock of red bird suddenly flew over my head like a lowcloud together with hollow thunder. I turned my headand found, not far away behind my back, the pile ofriprap was covered in a layer of red dust where somepeople as opaque as cicada's wings were fighting closelyagainst each other, some were falling off and standingup again among a pool of blood, one was holding aspear in his hand and a man with no legs was creepingforward towards Cobbler Tang's spring... While at thesame time, Tang was doing what he usually did besidethe spring, together with his young and beautiful wife,not caring even a little about what was happening in thegraveyard. Birds were flying above in an uproar, and thenresting on the high wall.., a beam of light was shiningthrough the window in the wall lighting up the sky. Iheard the loud horrible cry, "Water, water, water... "
In a minute, my body sank into endless red dust.
P3-5